Washington, DC
SPRINGFIELD -Interested in efforts to save energy and train a future workforce, U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III joined U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal on a tour of Baystate Medical Center Monday.
Their tour comes less than a week after Baystate Health announced plans to lay off 24 employees, cut hours for another 17 workers and not fill 45 open positions as a way of closing a $22 million systemwide budget shortfall. All of the cutbacks are in Springfield and most are at the flagship Baystate Medical Center campus.
Baystate executives blamed the shortfall on Medicaid. The state-federal insurance program for the poor pays 70 to 80 cents on the dollar toward the care of the poor.
Kennedy pointed out the complexity of Medicaid, being that it is a federal and state program.
Neal agreed.
“There is nothing as complicated as health-care economics,” Neal said. “It is, quite frequently one area where conventional economic rules do not apply.”
Both men stood by the federal Affordable Care Act now driving a lot of change in health care.
Mark Keroack, president and CEO of Baystate Health and Baystate Medical Center said Baysate is currently waiting on a state action that could help fill the finding gap.
Because the facility is located in Western Massachusetts larges city, it sees a large number of poor people. Also, because of the level of care it provides, it sees the region’s most complicated cases. For example, Baystate has a cardiac unit and is the region’s only Level 1 Trauma center.
“So we are both the city hospital for Springfield and the referring hospital for the region,” he said. “I don’t think officials in Boston always understand that.”
Keroack took Kennedy and Neal through the 1950s era Springfield building with it crowded narrow hallways and through new wards in the Davis Family Heart & Vascular Center, part of the 640,000-square-foot, $296 million MassMutual Wing which opened 2012.
Kennedy, grandson of the slain Attorney General and New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, has represented the state’s 4th Congressional District, which covers suburbs to the west of Boston and on the south shore since 2013. He is 34 and sits on the House Energy & Commerce Committee and on its health-care subcommittee.
Neal and Kennedy were on a swing Monday through Western Massachusetts including a stop at the STEM Middle Academy in Springfield
Baystate has a $2 billion-a-year budget.
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